‘Imagine that I offer you one atom of gold for every second that has elapsed in the last 100 years . . . No, on second thought, let’s go for the big time. Let’s say I offer one atom of gold for every second that has elapsed since the Big Bang. How much gold am I offering you?

You have rented a bank vault to hold the treasure. Now it’s time to open the vault. How much gold will you have?

Thought you might be interested in this from Intelligent Design Theory. From the book, Darwinism Under the Microscope, How Recent Scientific Evidence Points to Devine Design, by James P. Gills, M.D. & Tom Woodard, Ph.D. Here’s a section:

The solution of the popular Rubik’s Cube offers a colorful illustration of the impossibility of our accidental genesis by approximating the odds of the random evolution of a single protein of the human body. If a human subject were handed a cube and blindfolded, to ensure that all moves were random, this subject would need 1,350 billion years, at a rate of one move per second, to solve the cube. That span is 300 times the accepted age of the earth that dedicated evolutionists allow in their 15-billion-year-old universe. The odds against each move producing a color match on the cube are 5(10,000,000,000,000,000,000th power) to 1. Such odds are unfathomable given that we use more than 20,000 different proteins in our cells.

Our enzymes serve to refute Darwin as well. There are some 2,000 of these catalysts in our body, and the chance of finding all 2,000 by accident “is about the same as the chance of throwing an uninterrupted sequence of 50,000 sixes with an unbiased dice!” There are an estimated 10(80th power) atoms in the universe, and our odds for random emergence of all enzymes are 1 in 10(40,000th power). This means that life could not have appeared by “earthbound random forces even if the whole universe consisted of primeval soup.”

There’s more, but they conclude that:

The odds of life having been assembled by a Designer are indeed greater.

Of course, this is predicated on their model of irreducible complexity; and how they figure the odds of a designer are greater ... they don’t say.

Let me see if an English major with a law degree who dropped out of calculus twice rather than flunk the class can spot the mutating fly in this ointment.

The question isn’t how long would it take, statistically, for one human to randomly solve a Rubik’s cube. The question would be, what are the minimum number of moves it would take to solve the Rubik’s cube, and what is the probability that if ALL humans simultaneously began to randomly try to solve the rubik’s cube, at least one would solve it in the minimum number of moves? The minimum number plus 4 moves? And even that analogy seems very inappropriate.

As I understand evolution, each species doesn’t select one member, blindfold it, and then challenge it to mutate.

Here’s some more fun with numbers:
A. The last digit in the year in which the next president is elected who is neither a republican nor a democrat will be an even number.
B. The last digit in the year in which I celebrate my birthday in which my age is evenly divisible by 10 will be 8.
C. The last digit in the year in which jesus christ returns to earth to save his followers will be the square root of minus pi.

Signature

“I am one of the few people I know who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.” Sam Harris October 17, 2005

Let me see if an English major with a law degree who dropped out of calculus twice rather than flunk the class can spot the mutating fly in this ointment.

Good job, teuchter. I expected that while I was gone y’all would have jumped all over this and when I got back there would be at least a couple of pages added to the thread. But I like your answer. They’re also requiring in their odds that each move produce a color match. And the one human is significant, I think, because in contrast there would be billions and billions of microbiological structures that didn’t produce an evolutional change, so the odds are spread out, significantly reducing the estimated time longitudinally. I don’t know if that is a sound premise but I gave it a shot.

As I understand evolution, each species doesn’t select one member, blindfold it, and then challenge it to mutate.

‘Imagine that I offer you one atom of gold for every second that has elapsed in the last 100 years . . . No, on second thought, let’s go for the big time. Let’s say I offer one atom of gold for every second that has elapsed since the Big Bang. How much gold am I offering you?

You have rented a bank vault to hold the treasure. Now it’s time to open the vault. How much gold will you have?

Let me see if an English major with a law degree who dropped out of calculus twice rather than flunk the class can spot the mutating fly in this ointment.

Good job, teuchter. I expected that while I was gone y’all would have jumped all over this and when I got back there would be at least a couple of pages added to the thread. But I like your answer. They’re also requiring in their odds that each move produce a color match. And the one human is significant, I think, because in contrast there would be billions and billions of microbiological structures that didn’t produce an evolutional change, so the odds are spread out, significantly reducing the estimated time longitudinally. I don’t know if that is a sound premise but I gave it a shot.

As I understand evolution, each species doesn’t select one member, blindfold it, and then challenge it to mutate.

And God didn’t invent the Rubik’s Cube.

The other thing is that those 2000 enzymes…, they’re assuming that only those particular ones will do the job. Actually there are lots of combinations of enzymes that would work. And they didn’t all have to appear at once.

Here’s some numbers I can understand: A shrew’s heart beats 1,200 times per minute. On average they live 11 to 13 months. They don’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time and they never go into torpor or hibernate. To stay alive they have to eat three times their body weight every day, which means capturing a prey item every 15 to 30 minutes day and night, 24/7. For the shrew, an hour without food means starving to death.

During their lifetime a shrew’s heart beats 1.5 billion times, the same as us. In fact, every mammal, no matter what its size, gets roughly the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime. Imagine what it sounds like to put a stethoscope on a shrew.

Doctor to shrew: Put the caterpillaar down and take a deep breath. Stop chewing. Inhale. Put the spider down. Stop chewing. Exhale. How long have you had this problem? Don’t speak with your mouth full. Barbara, bring the shrew another caterpillar. I’m writing you a prescription to help you relax. I want you to take two of these between meals. How often do you get up at night?